From contacts at an institutional level to partnerships in teacher education

Building sustainable collaborations in the Transformative Horizons 2.0 project

Strategic approach

Building international collaborations makes a major contribution to training teachers for schools of diversity. Given the range of structures in teacher education around the world, how can new collaborations be initiated and put on a long-term sustainable footing?

Following on from the prior 2019-2022 project, the Transformative Horizons 2.0 project at Leibniz University Hannover is pursuing a strategy of exploiting existing contacts at an institutional level as a starting point for establishing and extending university partnerships around teacher education.

Based at the Leibniz School of Education, the Transformative Horizons 2.0 project aims to boost mobility and internationalisation at home in teacher education programmes for gymnasiums, vocational education and special educational needs. Our goal is to build sustainable and robust collaborations, so we take into account both the scope and the specific details of each of these teacher education programmes, but without losing sight of the issues that cut across all of them.

Leibniz Universität Hannover

Summer School 2023: impressions

Content and design

Transformative Horizons 2.0 consolidates a cooperation with the Universidad de Guanajuato (Mexico) which includes opportunities for students training to teach in gymnasiums to study both their subjects abroad. The cooperation with Purdue University, Indiana (USA) builds on a longstanding cooperation with Leibniz University which includes an engineering double degree programme. The partnership with the College of Education comprises a seminar course on inclusion, diversity and social justice as issues which are relevant to all aspects of teacher education with the goal of promoting internationalisation at home. The partnership also raises visibility through papers at international conferences.

Given the value in exploiting existing contacts in the area of teacher education, the cooperation with Windesheim University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands) is particularly relevant to vocational teacher education. The task of building sustainable collaborations in technical education must confront the challenge that most of our partner universities do not offer equivalent study programmes. Our teacher education collaboration with Windesheim provides exactly the right fit in this area.

Outcomes and sustainable collaborations

The benefits for students which arise from achieving a close fit which promotes sustainable collaboration between teacher education study programmes was evident in a summer for vocational teacher education at the Leibniz School of Education in 2023. During the summer school, students from Windesheim and Hannover were very interested in discussing similarities and differences in vocational teacher education. The highlight was a discussion on challenges facing teacher education with the Vice President for Education at Leibniz University, Hannover, Professor Julia Gillen.

Thanks to this, building sustainable partnerships in teacher education can not only draw on existing contacts, but also rely on the support of the university itself. At present, this includes Leibniz University, Hannover’s participation in the European Universities Linking Society and Technology (EULiST) European University Alliance.

Teilnehmende stehen an der Nana-Skulptur in Hannover.

Prof. Dr. Julia Gillen, Vizepräsidentin für Bildung der Leibniz Universität Hannover

Lively discussions with vocational teacher education students at the summer school emphasised the benefits to students from looking at issues from different perspectives. A school of diversity must strengthen internationalisation across all subjects in teacher education.

Professor Julia Gillen, Vice President for Education, Leibniz University, Hannover

Further information & contacts

Project homepage

Contact

Isabelle Kross
Projektkoordination
isabelle.kross@lse.uni-hannover.de
Tel: +49 511 762 12334